Face Blindness or Prosopagnosia is a neurological impairment that results in the inability to recognize faces. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, state, "The term prosopagnosia comes from the Greek words for “face” and “lack of knowledge.” They explained that there are many degrees to this impairment. Some may have trouble recognizing familiar faces while others can not distinguish between a face and an object. To some degree some are not even able to recognize their own face. I can't imagine not being able to recognize myself or others around me. This is a crippling disorder.One of the links in the lecture slides really made me more aware of what this disorder really is. I took the celebrity recognition test and scored an 84% which is one point less then the average. (oops) but it really gave me somewhat of an idea of what can go wrong when you are trying to recognize a face.
The Research Centers at Harvard and the University College London are doing an extensive amount of research on this disorder. They state, "Prosopagnosics often have difficulty recognizing people that they have encountered many times. In extreme cases, prosopagnosics have trouble recognizing even those people that they spend the most time with such as their spouses and their children." A link below demonstrates a person who lives with this disorder and also the link from the lecture slides to take the recognition quiz and also help out with this disorders research!
Prosopagnosia Video
http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php
